The Newest Old Gray Mare

You can also count me among the unimpressed with the Breyer Cyber Monday sale. Free shipping is great, but since I’m lucky enough to live in an area that affords me the luxury of handpicking, it’s not that big a temptation for me personally.

I thought they would have pulled out one or two moderately interesting “new” things to spice things up a bit, unless they’re saving them up for Grab Bags. They did come out with some pretty decent Grab Bags in early December of last year – featuring BreyerFest Specials, the French WEG Classics, Zodiac Series Classics and some of the Holiday Mare and Foal sets.

So my little “fun money” fund remains intact for now. Good.

Here’s a picture of the other Warehouse Find/Reissue I purchased along with the Bluegrass Bandit – the Stock Horse Mare in a particularly carbonated version of Dapple Gray:

There are no obvious flaws on her I can see, beyond the ones inherent to the mold itself and the Resist Dapple painting technique.

I have a slightly higher than average fondness for the Hess Stock Horse Family: they came out in the early 1980s, at the peak of my early hobby “career”, and they made up a significant percentage of my purchases then. I didn’t realize how much of a fondness I had until I was reorganizing my boxed models over the weekend:

That’s just a small portion of the Stock Horses I have – most of them are not boxed. Then, as now, boxes weren’t that high a priority for me. These boxes may look a bit rough, but what is important is that all the models in those boxes are top notch examples of their respective releases. And not going anywhere, either. (A few of the later arrivals, maybe…)

I just realized that I have Tests or Oddities of three of the four Stock Horse Family members, but none of the Stock Horse Mare yet. Hmm. I’ll have to keep that in mind, should the opportunity ever arise.

And it should, eventually. If any vintage Test Colors are “easy” and/or inexpensive to acquire, it’s the Hess Stock Horses. Marney’s albums and ephemera is full of them, and this one is a particular favorite of mine:

I often wonder where she is, now. 

Dapple Gray Stock Horse Mare: The Reboot

I’m a little short on time today (the past 24 hours – I can’t even, right now) so I can’t comment on the six new Warehouse Finds released today as a group. But this one piece though, I cannot let pass:

Technically, she’s a Reissue of the #761 American Quarter Horse Mare from 1999-2000:

http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/images/00761.jpg

…but with a somewhat different paint job. To put it modestly!

The Dapple Gray on the original #761 is quite realistically rendered, with smaller and finer dapples and extensive gray body shading. The “reissue” is more like the 1996 BreyerFest Volunteer Special Run Merlin – the Rearing Mustang, not the Resin Dragon Horse thing – in a form of Dapple Gray most of us would now classify as something in the “Decorator” family:

http://www.identifyyourbreyer.com/images/700796a.jpg

While Stock Horse Mare doesn’t have a huge fan base within the hobby, she does pretty well with the general public looking for a sweet, pleasant-looking Stock Mare. It’s no coincidence that she’s been featured in a number of Special Run Sets and Play Sets targeted toward those consumers, and always in strictly realistic colors.

Until today. It seems hard to believe, but this is the first intentionally non-realistic color on the Hess Stock Horse Mare.

And I love her so much. It’s like she’s covered in bubbles!

You have no idea how much I needed to see her today.

It was pretty tough not to buy her on sight, but budget says I better wait until the Stablemates Club piece gets released so I can save a couple of bucks on shipping. And maybe toss in the Black Bluegrass Bandit too, if that one is still available.

Tractor Supply 2017

This year’s Tractor Supply Specials offer an interesting contrast. We’ve got something old – the Traditional Running Black Beauty in Palomino, named Lakota:

Tractor Supply Link for Lakota

And something new – the Geronimo in an Aged Gray, named Jacy:

Tractor Supply Link for Jacy

(FYI: Neither one is technically available, yet. They are just on the TSC web site to get us all stirred up, obviously.)

Hobbyists tend to forget that the model-horse-buying public consists of more than just active hobbyists, and what the rest of the world likes and what we like rarely align.

Lakota is clearly designed with the rest of the model-horse-buying public in mind.

I see two big markets for Lakota. The first: someone who might feel nostalgic for the less sophisticated Breyers of their youth – he might not be popular now, but the original #89 Black Beauty had a pretty respectable ten-year run through most of the 1980s. The second: someone (young or old) who just wants a pretty palomino horse to gallop on their shelves, and for whom strict realism or accuracy is not that big a thing.

Jacy is a little more tailored to the active hobbyist market: a new mold fresh off a moderately well-received BreyerFest release, in a modest and realistic color. (The other widely available Geronimo is the Patinated Copper Decorator Bandera – an acquired taste, no disagreement there.)

If I were to buy one – this Fall is looking to be a bit of an expensive one for me, so the TSC SRs are a definitely not a priority here – the Lakota would get the nod. It’s not that I’m necessarily a huge fan of the mold (who is the very definition of a shelf hog) but the color looks lovely on him.

Like one of the 2010 Tractor Supply Specials – Templeton Thompson’s Jane, a solid Chestnut on the Stock Horse Mare mold – I fear I may be smitten once I see him. Darn it, Tractor Supply, why do you have to be right next door to the local Salvation Army store....

Not Plain

This brand new office chair is almost too comfortable; I’ve already fallen asleep in it twice! I’m not sure the second time was the chair’s fault, though - I was already exhausted, and the movie I was trying to watch (the 1925 version of The Wizard of Oz) was awful. Slow, boring, and even less like the book than the 1939 film.

Other gifts among my small Christmas booty included a much-needed GPS, a couple of sewing gadgets, a new barn jacket, and a posh corduroy shirt to replace the one Vita ate earlier this year. (I’m wearing it now - mmm, so cozy!)

No horses, again - except the ones I bought myself.

I had to work early on Sunday (Yes, the day after Christmas. Less said of that, the better) and I thought I’d reward myself with a horse; the Tractor Supply with the better-than-average selection of Breyers just happened to be on the way home. There are lots of hobbyists in my neck of the woods, so most of my TSC horse purchases tend to come not from my local store - which gets emptied faster than Vita’s food dish, post-holiday - but from one of the three others within reasonable driving distance. And the one I visited yesterday I consider the best of the bunch.

I had been thinking about the Christmas selection at TSC for a while now - not the SRs, but the regular runs of Isadora-Cruce, Fleetstreet Max, and Bet Yer Blue Boons. I loved all three, and at 40 percent or more off, I could afford to splurge and get myself one.

So, who did the lucky horse end up being?


Would you believe - Templeton Thompson’s Jane?

Yeah, I didn’t believe it at first, either. As I was examining the selection for nits, dings and overspray, my eyes kept going back to the Jane. I’m not a huge fan of the mold, as I’ve explained before, but good golly - the paint job on this one was magnificent! (I know my subpar photography skills are getting in the way of seeing that, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one.) The paint jobs on the Janes I had seen before were quite pleasing to the eye, but this girl was miles and miles ahead of all of them.

After much pondering, I put down a near-perfect Bet Yer Blue Boons, and walked this not-so-plain Jane over to the cashier. It didn’t hurt that she was also several dollars cheaper than the other three, with what appeared to be a half dozen clearance stickers of increasing degrees of cheapness plastered to her box. She needed a home, and doggone it, she was going to have one with me.

This sort of thing has happened to me before with the Stock Horse Mare. Several years ago I happened to be in the neighborhood of a Toys R Us, located in a part of the Metro Detroit area rarely frequented by us model horse types. I had used this to my advantage before in acquiring certain TRU exclusives that had disappeared in an eyeblink everywhere else.

I walked in to scope out the selection for any hidden treasures. Would I find a forgotten SR? An cool variation? No, I came home with this little girl:


It’s a little hard to see in my slightly overexposed photograph, but this example of the #852 "Appy Mare" had the most flawless paint job I had seen in some time. She looked good. Too good to leave behind.

I kept telling myself that I didn’t need another Stock Horse Mare, but she was so cheap, and so beautiful, I couldn’t help myself. She had been sitting on that shelf for at least three years, unloved and unwanted. She had to come home with me.

I’ve purged my collection several times since then - sometimes, quite severely - but she’s still around. It’s more than just her pretty paint job, it’s her story, too: unloved, unwanted, unpurchased. It only makes sense that I had to buy her "sister" fifteen years later.

The SHM at TSC

Our local Tractor Supply finally got their Holiday stuff set up; in the past, they’ve been among the first to get the goodies in, but not this year. I had no plans on buying anything - hello, painfully-tight budget - but I did want to inspect the goodies for, you know, research purposes.

The Ranch Horse "Popcorn" was way nicer than I expected him to be; those dark, muddy promo photos did him no justice at all. In terms of chestnut paint jobs, I still prefer the SR Easy Jet, but I wouldn’t turn a Popcorn down if he just happened to end up in my mailbox or under the tree this XMAS.

He’s unnumbered, except for the export serial number mumbo-jumbo, so I assume he’s an open-ended run (limited to orders, not to a set quantity.) That doesn’t necessarily mean that there’ll be more of him than the limited-to-quantity exclusives; indeed, there might be considerably less, considering that sales haven’t been all that great on some of the more recent TSC exclusives. Popcorn’s nice, but I don’t see him generating the extra sales that a tie-in like John Wayne or Bonanza would.

Stores might be order less, and stock up on items with quicker movers. Like maybe those Classic Stock Horse Families? Boy, those sets are nice. (And more of the Tail Up Foal! Yes!)

Man, it was really hard not walking out with the Prince Plaudit one. I like how they mixed it up and included all of Breyer’s different Appaloosa paint techniques in that one set: you’ve got splash spotting, airbrushing and masking. A nice, subtle nod to collectors there, I think.

When I walked out of the TSC today, though, it was one of the other SRs that stuck in my mind - Templeton Thompson’s Jane, a Stock Horse Mare who comes in a rather nice shaded chestnut, too. She also appears to be another open-ended run; I’ve been told that she’s another TSC exclusive, but you know how it’s been with some of these farm-store SRs lately.

While the Stock Horse Stallion does have a few deficiencies, he’s not completely unattractive as is, especially with the right paint job. The Mare, on the other hand, well I … the nicest thing I can say is that the potential is there. I know it because I’ve seen it: several years ago at Model Horse Congress, D’arry Frank had an amazing custom of a SHM for sale I would have bought in a heartbeat, if I hadn’t been a destitute college student at the time.

What amazed me was that she wasn’t a "drastic" custom - and this was back in the day when that word actually meant something. Just some corrections, a slight head tuck, legs moved slightly, and she wasn’t just pretty, she was beautiful. Beautiful enough to make me actually flip over the price tag and take a look, even though I knew she wasn’t anywhere in my league, financially.

Yeah, I know, it’s D’arry Frank we’re talking about here - one of the few customizers who could make a Khemosabi live show competitive. But when you see something like that, it makes you realize that every model horse is beautiful - or at least has the potential to be.

I have no idea how well Jane will sell; she’s clearly another item that’s geared towards the non-hobbyist portion of the model horse buying public. Ironically, she might end being more "rare" than the Popcorn, though it’s more a matter of time and space, than numbers. Something I’ll talk about in greater detail in my next post.